algroth

Giant Claw - Soft Channel Really liking this. It's combining some of the dada playfulness of death's dynamic shroud and other more absurdist plunderphonics/vapourwave acts, and the more transcendent/quasi-spiritual IDM of Holly Herndon's Platform to create a record that's quite creative and rather cathartic too.

Gonna go ahead and re-post some of the stuff I've been listening to lately from a different forum... The Body + Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light Like the best albums of its ilk, it's all about how creative and colourful the noise and aggression is, and it's mighty so. Nicking this comparison from a RYM review, it feels like a noise punk Roberto Matta. Good stuff.

If you haven't seen it and are into Woody Allenesque "dramedies", I can recommend The Meyerowitz Stories. Also people have been raving about his newest film, Uncut Gems, which seems like a pretty major departure to the stuff he's been doing his whole career (and is also setting him up as an Oscar contender apparently).

Or, alternatively, greater enemy/encounter difficulty without the survival elements.

El-P looks so adorable and fuzzy in that video.

Oddly enough, this right here is a great breakdown of why The Mandalorian fails as well, from an aesthetic standpoint. It too suffers from a really drab grey palette, of an unengaging protagonist who's made less interesting by the fact that his face is concealed behind a static helmet and his body language is hardly ever emphasized through the framing or performance, of the general conflict between the cartoonish and the "realistic" throughout, and so on. Quite an interesting watch.

To be fair, ZA/UM would probably be one of them and I wouldn't disagree. But yeah, Obsidian's way ahead of the curve in this regard, compared to most.

I was thinking old classic series, more specifically the gold cloths from the Battle of the Twelve Temples saga.

Disco Elysium was the big winner of the night, going 4 for 4. Would have liked to see some more love for The Outer Worlds but I'm glad the former's getting the recognition it's getting. The biggest robbery of the night is Perkz being denied best esports player over some Fortnite kid, what the **** was that about, seriously?

Turns out the first game is Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, and will be a turn-based RPG. Edit: and there's a second single-player League-based game announced called Convergence, which will be an action platformer based around Ekko, playing around with time-warping mechanics and so on. Sounds cool.

I get Saint Seiya vibes from it.

Nice to hear!

By the way, which version of Wasteland 2 ought I to play? Regular or Director's Cut?

Congrats to the team! I'll be in agreement with the comment IGN comment section about Mads Mikkelsen and Tommie Earl Jenkins being completely ignored for best performance when they were certainly a cut above the rest of the contenders there - I get that IGN didn't give Death Stranding a positive score and that the game might not be what it's been made out to be, but credit where credit's due, both of them were fantastic and were also given a lot to express themselves through on an actoral level. At the same time Ashly did do an excellent job with Parvati so I'm glad for her, but in comparison her role feels a little slight. Very confused about Control of all games winning GOTY and best story, I thought it was generally perceived a bit lacklustre especially in that department. Would have liked to see a bit more love for Disco Elysium as well, but overall I'm glad The Outer Worlds got some attention across the board.

It also used to be the case that American productions would only see about 25% of the earnings made in China, opposite to the 45% elsewhere abroad or the 55% in USA. Also at least in 2016 China had a maximum quota of foreign films that could be released theatrically. I'm not sure if these facts still hold true today, but even without these things in consideration, most films beyond some select cases still make higher gross numbers in USA alone than they do in China, let alone with the rest of the world combined. I think it's safe to say China is *a* market, and an important one (arguably second), but not *the* market aside from some very specific instances. For a random example, Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing foreign film in China by quite the margin (over $200 million above the next film in line, The Fate of the Furious) still made $614 million relative to the $858 million it made domestically.

Sony have definitely been studying the Star Wars trailers for this...

Ep. 5 is outright embarrassing. Talk about tonal whiplash - the amount of cutesy **** added on top and between the grimmer imagery makes George Lucas' special editions measured in comparison. There's a sequence where we jump from broad comic relief in the shape of a spaceship mechanic and her droids, to an industrial variation of the main theme and Mando finding the heads of Startroopers stuck on pikes, then straight back to comic relief replete with cutesy bouncy music for good measure, all in the span of thirty seconds.

And released on a weekly basis. Seriously, Disney, it's not 1997 anymore.

I didn't write about ep. 4 but I'll say that it exacerbates all of the issues in the series thus far. A rather pointless deviation from a plot that has yet to make its case for why we ought to care, shot in a manner so oddly televisual and even at times theatrical that it just feels like a lost Xena: Warrior Princess episode. The very beginning is especially weird, with the thrift-store rubber orcs jumping from out of the artificial fog and doing their pretend attack, bouncing around a little before bouncing right back out in a wide, still shot where you can clearly see how their "exit" was to merely crouch behind the tall grass. Seriously, what? Bryce Dallas Howard directed this - I think making a "like father, like daughter" remark would be unfair to Ron, and that's not a sentiment I think too often. Also, more shameless plugs to Disney's line of toys: "[Baby Yoda]'s SO CUTE!!! CAN I PLAY WITH HIM?!?!" **** right off.

Riot Games announces RiotForge, a new subsidiary dedicated to single-player games, which will be unveiling a new "story-driven game" next week at the Game Awards. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-game-awards-will-include-around-10-new-game-reveals/ https://riotforgegames.com/

They really did that? Jeez... Did they also classify Foxcatcher as a musical or comedy because it starred Steve Carrell?